Peter and Paul (sans Mary)

I’m of that age that I might have seen a number of Peter, Paul, and Mary concerts. But I didn’t. Oh, I saw them perform a few times, at a peace rally here, at some protest rally there. And I saw them on television, a lot. But I had never paid to see them play.

And I didn’t own a lot of their albums. Off the top, I’m thinking that I only purchased, on vinyl of course, Album 1700, named, I recall without looking, for their catalogue number on Warner Brothers Records, which included the Beatles-namechecked I Dig Rock and Roll Music; I’m In Love With A Big Blue Frog, a song my college friend Lynn sang A LOT; and the big hit, written by John Denver, Leaving on a Jet Plane. I subsequently acquired other PPM albums, from friends giving up their LP collections.

Still, before seeing Peter Yarrow and Noel Paul Stookey at Proctors Friday night, I couldn’t quite imagine how the event would play out. In fact, in the middle of the week, when I reminded my wife, who had secured the tickets via a pledge to a local public radio station, of the concert, she groaned, more out of exhaustion of the week, and how much more tired she’d be by Friday night.

But we both really ended up enjoying the show. In the beginning, the gentleman explained how doing a 50-year trio with only two performers affected them, and, they surmised, the audience. “She is present in her absence” seemed to be the message. The first half of the show, I think they wanted to make it known that they weren’t just about their hits.

At intermission, ran into Sarge Greg, who wrote this review; he was hanging out with his friend Bowtie Paul, and we bored my wife with arcane music references which caused her to temporarily flee.

The second half started with mini-sets from Noel Paul and then Peter; the latter did a medley that was very familiar to me, and included songs my father, who was a singer of folk songs in Binghamton back in the 1960s, used to perform, including “Oh, Freedom”, during which Yarrow gave a shout-out to Alice Green (no relation), who was in the audience.

The rest of the program was about the hits. and we, the audience, were Mary Travers. And I could “see” Mary, on “Jet Plane” but especially on “Blowin’ in the Wind.” The power of suggestion must be very great. Or maybe Mary WAS there.